David Rice presents a comprehensive historical look at celibacy in his book about resigned priests entitled, Shattered Vows. Rice credits Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx in The Church with a Human Face with asserting that clerical celibacy originated in "a partly pagan notion of ritual purity," as Sipe indicates with the aforementioned examples. At the Council of Nicaea in 325, a proposal to require celibacy for all priests was defeated and at the Council of Trullo in 692, marriage rights for priests were reasserted. (Rice page 161.) Schillebeeckx says that, first in the fourth century came a law that forbade a married priest from having sexual intercourse the night before celebrating the Eucharist. However, when the Western Church began celebrating a daily mass, abstinence became a permanent factor for married priests. "At the origin of the law of abstinence, and later the law of celibacy," said Schillebeeckx, "we find an antiquated anthropology and ancient view of sexuality." (ibid) Rice follows with a quotation from St. Jerome which expressed the views of both pagans and Christians at the time that, "All sexual intercourse is impure." (ibid) Because the resulting implication of a priest living with his wife like a brother led many priests into "deplorable situations," in 1139, the Second Lateran Council forbade the marriage of priests altogether and declared all existing marriages involving priests null and void. (ibid)
Schillebeeckx says that, first in the fourth century came a law that forbade a married priest from having sexual intercourse the night before celebrating the Eucharist. However, when the Western Church began celebrating a daily mass, abstinence became a permanent factor for married priests.
"At the origin of the law of abstinence, and later the law of celibacy," said Schillebeeckx, "we find an antiquated anthropology and ancient view of sexuality." (ibid) Rice follows with a quotation from St. Jerome which expressed the views of both pagans and Christians at the time that, "All sexual intercourse is impure." (ibid)
Because the resulting implication of a priest living with his wife like a brother led many priests into "deplorable situations," in 1139, the Second Lateran Council forbade the marriage of priests altogether and declared all existing marriages involving priests null and void. (ibid)
If there were no offspring, the Church could claim a priest's estate after his death.
Offloading excess sons into the church was also a useful ploy in those countries where primogeniture (inheritance by the firstborn son) wasn't the cultural norm. Assuming shared inheritance, a family's power and wealth is much easier to transmit down the generations if you can shift some of the potential inheritors into celibacy and avowed (if not necessarily practised) poverty. Daughters might be treated the same way to avoid dowry payments.
It was a slick system, and it only really began to break down in the last third of the nineteenth century courtesy of expanded suffrage and agricultural depression.
